THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 17, 1995 TAG: 9512150601
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
When 117-year-old Walter Williams, the final surviving Civil War veteran, died in Houston during the pre-dawn hours of Dec. 19, 1959, the last Boy in Gray crossed over rainbow bridge into the Valhalla of the Southern Confederacy.
Until three years before his death, Williams had been one of the last trio of veterans of what unreconstructed Southerns still refer to as The Late Unpleasantness. In 1956, Albert Woolson of Duluth, Minn., the last surviving Union army veteran, died. On March 19, 1959, nine months before Williams' death, he was predeceased by another Confederate comrade, John Salling of Slant, Va.
Commenting on Williams' death, then Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson said: ``The death of the last Civil War veteran seals the door on a great tragic period.'' President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the nation's flags to be flown at half-mast and issued a proclamation containing these words:
``An era has ended. With millions of Americans throughout the land, I pause in respectful silence. The wounds of the deep and bitter dispute which once divided our nation have been long healed, and an American in a divided world now holds up on a larger canvas the cherished tradition of liberty and justice for all.''
Born in Itawamba County, Miss., on Nov. 14, 1842, Williams joined the Confederate army in 1864 at age 22. He first served with the Texas Fifth Infantry Regiment under Gen. John B. Hood. Shortly before the war ended, he was transferred to Quantrill's Raiders.
Williams never fired a shot against the Yankees. But he later recalled he had a few fired at him one morning while he ate breakfast. Mainly, Williams served as a forager to seek out and kill cattle for food for his starving Confederate buddies. Many years later, when a newspaper reporter asked him to describe his function as a soldier, he replied testily, ``I stole food, that's what!''
With the war behind him, Williams moved from Mississippi to Calvert, Texas, in 1870 and opened a store. Later he moved to a farm near Franklin in south central Texas and traded cattle.
Meanwhile, his first wife, by whom he had 7 children, died. He then married a women 31 years his junior and sired 12 offspring. Williams' second marriage lasted 64 years, and by the time he died he was a patriarch with more than 200 descendants.
A fiercely proud man, Williams waited until he was 90 before he applied for a Texas Civil War pension. This caused quite a stir in local newspaper circles. One reporter claimed Williams was making demands on the Lone Star state under false pretenses. Fortunately for Williams, the researchers at the state pension bureau were able to verify his claims. As a result, he received $300 a month from the Texas Confederate Pension Fund and a special $135.45 pension from the federal government until he died.
A jolly, fun-loving fellow who liked to hunt, Williams became a pet of several Civil War groups during his latter years. A few months before his death, he rode in the Houston Armed Forces Day parade and ``peeled off a reasonably snappy salute as he passed the receiving stand.''
For 48 hours after his death Williams' body lay in state in the Harris County Civil Courts building in a Confederate flag-draped specially designed casket of solid copper tinged with gray. As a special tribute, the velvet cover lining of the casket was adorned with five white stars denoting the honorary rank of general he had been awarded by a service organization.
Williams was buried with full military honors in Franklin, Texas, about 125 miles northeast of Houston. Interestingly, the military procession to the grave included the 25-man fife and drum corps of the Sons of Union Veterans of Mount Vernon, Ohio, the birthplace of Daniel Decatur Emmett, the composer of ``Dixie'' - one of Williams' lifelong favorites. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Walter Williams
by CNB